“A Japanese corporation has almost as large privileges as a Japanese subject. It can own land and exercise other rights not accorded to individual foreigners. A corporation so organized may contain in its ranks foreign members, but it must be of such a nature as not to be under any danger of control of any kind from outside. Even after incorporation, the charter will be forfeited should the policy of the Japanese Government be at any time prejudiced by the conduct of a corporation so sanctioned.
“If foreigners wish to do business in combination with the Japanese, the best way would be to form a Gōshi Kaisha or limited partnership, they themselves carrying unlimited liability. To control a Kabushiki Kaisha, or limited company, they should own more than half the amount of capital, either by holding themselves or through their own nominees, and shares should be tied up so as not to allow their transfer without the consent of the board of directors. The advantage of any business being organized as a Japanese corporation consists, as the law now stands, in owning land and having the full rights of Japanese subjects.”
It should be added here that many prominent Japanese continue to urge that foreigners be allowed to own land, possibly under certain restrictions; and that such a privilege is quite likely to be granted before very long.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Suitable works of reference on this chapter are scarce. “The Yankees of the East” (Curtis), chap, viii., and “The Real Japan” (Norman), chaps. iii. and xi., furnish some material. Dr. Masujima’s papers in the Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan on “The Japanese Legal Seal” (vol. xvii.) and “Modern Japanese Legal Institutions” (vol. xviii.) are quite instructive; and so is Longford’s “Summary of the Japanese Penal Codes” in vol. v. Some specific references have already been made in footnotes.
“Every Day Japan” (Lloyd) contains interesting material on these topics. Hozumi’s “Lectures on the New Japanese Civil Code” and “Ancestor Worship and Japanese Law” are very valuable.
CHAPTER XIII
THE NEW WOMAN IN JAPAN[119]
Outline of Topics: Not Western “new woman,” but abstract, legal new woman in Japan.—Woman in old régime; wife in old régime; lack of “home”; woman anciently honored.—Legal status in Old Japan, in New Japan; independent person; marriage; right of marriage; husband and wife.—Divorce,—by arrangement and judicial.—Concubinage; child of a concubine.—Prospects of new woman; openings for labor.—The “New Great Learning for Women.”—Enlarged educational advantages; new schools.—Women in business.—The Empress and the Crown Princess.—The woman question; further needs; women and Christianity.—Bibliography.
ANY intention of using the term “new woman” in a jocose or satirical way is disclaimed at the outset. It is not our purpose to refer at all to such a creature as that called “new woman” in the Occident; for it has not yet appeared to any great extent among the Japanese. It may be true, in some cases, that the modernized Japanese woman is “without gentleness or refinement,” and may be called a “parody of a man” or a “sickening sort of person.” But, as the “Jiji Shimpo” explains, “the process of the new woman’s evolution may be disfigured by some accident”; and “the new woman stands out with objectionable salience because her environment is so colorless.”
It is desired, in the first instance, to consider, not the new woman in the concrete, in the flesh, but the abstract, legal new woman that has been created by the new Civil Code of Japan. In looking through the translation of that document by Mr. Gubbins, we have been deeply impressed with the possibilities which lie before the women of New Japan through the rights and privileges vouchsafed to them under that code.